Welcome to Baseline’s blog
entries, and to my inaugural blog, Inside
IT. For those of you who have seen me present and read some of my articles,
you’ll be happy (or sad) to know that this blog will echo the same themes,
tone, and yes, sense of humor, from those other media. (I promise to control my
colorful language and not use too many four-letter words, unless it’s something
like “SDLC” or “BPEL.”)
My Baseline blog will be
consistent with the rest of my speaking and writing topics, which means that it
will align with some of the core assumptions in my other content, including:
We’re doing all
this IT stuff to help the business. We’ve obsessed over the importance of IT
having a place at the corporate table, but we sometimes forget we’re here to
support business actions and decision making. Companies use technology and data
to help run their businesses, not because they want to win awards for the
biggest database. We’re so wrapped up in protecting the reputation of IT that
sometimes we forget about the business. As Jill would say, we do so at our
peril.- Too many IT
organizations forget that data can contribute to innovation. If you take a look
at what a retailer does, it doesn’t invent its own POS or inventory management
systems, it buys them. What’s valuable is the data. Where IT provides value
isn’t in deploying its backbone systems, but creating the decision making systems
supported by information. Which as it happens are closer to the business users.
Notice a theme here? - Data integration
isn’t rocket science. It’s really not that hard. The complexity isn’t in the
processing. It’s in defining the rules for identification and integration. We
still find IT shops that want to build their own ETL tools rather than
designing the right data integration frameworks. Sometimes the rules that
govern integration aren’t as sexy as building new software. Sometimes we don’t
need to build a better mousetrap ‘cuz there are no mice. We have other problems
to solve.
maybe my new mantra, is: Leverage, re-use, and buy if you have to. Check back
here often and we’ll discuss how to do them.
